William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth was born on April 7th, 1770, in Cockermouth,

Cumberland, England. Young William’s parents, John and Ann, died
during his boyhood. Raised amid the mountains of Cumberland alongside
the River Derwent, Wordsworth grew up in a rustic society, and spent a
great deal of his time playing outdoors, in what he would later remember
as a pure communion with nature. In the early 1790s William lived for a
time in France, then in the grip of the violent Revolution; Wordsworth’s
philosophical sympathies lay with the revolutionaries, but his loyalties lay
with England, whose monarchy he was not prepared to see overthrown.
While in France, Wordsworth had a long affair with Annette Vallon, with
whom he had a daughter, Caroline. A later journey to France to meet
Caroline, now a young girl, would inspire the great sonnet “It is a
beauteous evening, calm and free.”

The chaos and bloodshed of the Reign of Terror in Paris drove William to
philosophy books; he was deeply troubled by the rationalism he found in
the works of thinkers such as William Godwin, which clashed with his
own softer, more emotional understanding of the world. In despair, he
gave up his pursuit of moral questions. In the mid-1790s, however,
Wordsworth’s increasing sense of anguish forced him to formulate his
own understanding of the world and of the human mind in more concrete
terms. The theory he produced, and the poetics he invented to embody it,
caused a revolution in English literature.
Developed throughout his life, Wordsworth’s understanding of the human
mind seems simple enough today, what with the advent of psychoanalysis
and the general Freudian acceptance of the importance of childhood in the
adult psyche. But in Wordsworth’s time, in what Seamus Heaney has
called “Dr. Johnson’s supremely adult eighteenth century,” it was
shockingly unlike anything that had been proposed before. Wordsworth
believed (as he expressed in poems such as the “Intimations of
Immortality” Ode) that, upon being born, human beings move from a
perfect, idealized realm into the imperfect, un-ideal earth. As children,

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some memory of the former purity and glory in which they lived remains,
best perceived in the solemn and joyous relationship of the child to the
beauties of nature. But as children grow older, the memory fades, and the
magic of nature dies. Still, the memory of childhood can offer an
important solace, which brings with it almost a kind of re-access to the
lost purities of the past. And the maturing mind develops the capability to
understand nature in human terms, and to see in it metaphors for human
life, which compensate for the loss of the direct connection.
Freed from financial worries by a legacy left to him in 1795, Wordsworth
moved with his sister Dorothy to Racedown, and then to Alfoxden in
Grasmere, where Wordsworth could be closer to his friend and fellow poet
Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Together, Wordsworth and Coleridge began
work on a book called Lyrical Ballads, first published in 1798 and
reissued with Wordsworth’s monumental preface in 1802.
The publication of Lyrical Ballads represents a landmark moment for
English poetry; it was unlike anything that had come before, and paved
the way for everything that has come after. According to the theory that
poetry resulted from the “spontaneous overflow” of emotions, as
Wordsworth wrote in the preface, Wordsworth and Coleridge made it
their task to write in the simple language of common people, telling
concrete stories of their lives. According to this theory, poetry originated
in “emotion recollected in a state of tranquility”; the poet then surrendered
to the emotion, so that the tranquility dissolved, and the emotion remained
in the poem. This explicit emphasis on feeling, simplicity, and the
pleasure of beauty over rhetoric, ornament, and formality changed the
course of English poetry, replacing the elaborate classical forms of Pope
and Dryden with a new Romantic sensibility. Wordsworth’s most
important legacy, besides his lovely, timeless poems, is his launching of
the Romantic era, opening the gates for later writers such as John Keats,
Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron in England, and Emerson and
Thoreau in America.
Following the success of Lyrical Ballads and his subsequent poem The
Prelude, a massive autobiography in verse form, Wordsworth moved to
the stately house at Rydal Mount where he lived, with Dorothy, his wife
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Mary, and his children, until his death in 1850. Wordsworth became the
dominant force in English poetry while still quite a young man, and he
lived to be quite old; his later years were marked by an increasing
aristocratic temperament and a general alienation from the younger
Romantics whose work he had inspired. Byron—the only important poet
to become more popular than Wordsworth during Wordsworth’s
lifetime—in particular saw him as a kind of sell-out, writing in his
sardonic preface to Don Juan that the once-liberal Wordsworth had
“turned out a Tory” at last. The last decades of Wordsworth’s life,
however, were spent as Poet Laureate of England, and until his death he
was widely considered the most important author in England.

Wordsworth’s monumental poetic legacy rests on a large number of

important poems, varying in length and weight from the short, simple
lyrics of the 1790s to the vast expanses of The Prelude, thirteen books
long in its 1808 edition. But the themes that run through Wordsworth’s
poetry, and the language and imagery he uses to embody those themes,
remain remarkably consistent throughout the Wordsworth canon,
adhering largely to the tenets Wordsworth set out for himself in the 1802
preface to Lyrical Ballads. Here, Wordsworth argues that poetry should
be written in the natural language of common speech, rather than in the
lofty and elaborate dictions that were then considered “poetic.” He argues
that poetry should offer access to the emotions contained in memory. And
he argues that the first principle of poetry should be pleasure, that the chief
duty of poetry is to provide pleasure through a rhythmic and beautiful
expression of feeling—for all human sympathy, he claims, is based on a
subtle pleasure principle that is “the naked and native dignity of man.”

Recovering “the naked and native dignity of man” makes up a significant

part of Wordsworth’s poetic project, and he follows his own advice from
the 1802 preface. Wordsworth’s style remains plain-spoken and easy to
understand even today, though the rhythms and idioms of common
English have changed from those of the early nineteenth century. Many
of Wordsworth’s poems (including masterpieces such as “Tintern Abbey”
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and the “Intimations of Immortality” ode) deal with the subjects of
childhood and the memory of childhood in the mind of the adult in
particular, childhood’s lost connection with nature, which can be
preserved only in memory. Wordsworth’s images and metaphors mix
natural scenery, religious symbolism (as in the sonnet “It is a beauteous
evening, calm and free,” in which the evening is described as being “quiet
as a nun”), and the relics of the poet’s rustic childhood—cottages,
hedgerows, orchards, and other places where humanity intersects gently
and easily with nature.

Wordsworth’s poems initiated the Romantic era by emphasizing feeling,

instinct, and pleasure above formality and mannerism. More than any poet
before him, Wordsworth gave expression to inchoate human emotion; his
lyric “Strange fits of passion have I known,” in which the speaker
describes an inexplicable fantasy he once had that his lover was dead,
could not have been written by any previous poet. Curiously for a poet
whose work points so directly toward the future, many of Wordsworth’s
important works are preoccupied with the lost glory of the past—not only
of the lost dreams of childhood but also of the historical past, as in the
powerful sonnet “London, 1802,” in which the speaker exhorts the spirit
of the centuries-dead poet John Milton to teach the modern world a better
way to live.

Throughout Wordsworth’s work, nature provides the ultimate good

influence on the human mind. All manifestations of the natural world—
from the highest mountain to the simplest flower—elicit noble, elevated
thoughts and passionate emotions in the people who observe these
manifestations. Wordsworth repeatedly emphasizes the importance of
nature to an individual’s intellectual and spiritual development. A good
relationship with nature helps individuals connect to both the spiritual and
the social worlds. As Wordsworth explains in The Prelude, a love of
nature can lead to a love of humankind. In such poems as “The World Is
Too Much with Us” (1807) and “London, 1802” (1807) people become
selfish and immoral when they distance themselves from nature by living
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in cities. Humanity’s innate empathy and nobility of spirit becomes
corrupted by artificial social conventions as well as by the squalor of city
life. In contrast, people who spend a lot of time in nature, such as laborers
and farmers, retain the purity and nobility of their souls.

Wordsworth praised the power of the human mind. Using memory and
imagination, individuals could overcome difficulty and pain. For instance,
the speaker in “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”
(1798) relieves his loneliness with memories of nature, while the leech
gatherer in “Resolution and Independence” (1807) perseveres cheerfully
in the face of poverty by the exertion of his own will. The transformative
powers of the mind are available to all, regardless of an individual’s class
or background. This democratic view emphasizes individuality and
uniqueness. Throughout his work, Wordsworth showed strong support for
the political, religious, and artistic rights of the individual, including the
power of his or her mind. In the 1802 preface to Lyrical Ballads,
Wordsworth explained the relationship between the mind and poetry.
Poetry is “emotion recollected in tranquility”—that is, the mind
transforms the raw emotion of experience into poetry capable of giving
pleasure. Later poems, such as “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” (1807),
imagine nature as the source of the inspiring material that nourishes the
active, creative mind.

In Wordsworth’s poetry, childhood is a magical, magnificent time of

innocence. Children form an intense bond with nature, so much so that
they appear to be a part of the natural world, rather than a part of the
human, social world. Their relationship to nature is passionate and
extreme: children feel joy at seeing a rainbow but great terror at seeing
desolation or decay. In 1799, Wordsworth wrote several poems about a
girl named Lucy who died at a young age. These poems, including “She
dwelt among the untrodden ways” (1800) and “Strange fits of passion
have I known” (1800), praise her beauty and lament her untimely death.
In death, Lucy retains the innocence and splendor of childhood, unlike the

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children who grow up, lose their connection to nature, and lead
unfulfilling lives. The speaker in “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”
believes that children delight in nature because they have access to a
divine, immortal world. As children age and reach maturity, they lose this
connection but gain an ability to feel emotions, both good and bad.
Through the power of the human mind, particularly memory, adults can
recollect the devoted connection to nature of their youth.

The speakers of Wordsworth’s poems are inveterate wanderers: they roam

solitarily, they travel over the moors, they take private walks through the
highlands of Scotland. Active wandering allows the characters to
experience and participate in the vastness and beauty of the natural world.
Moving from place to place also allows the wanderer to make discoveries
about himself. In “I travelled among unknown men” (1807), the speaker
discovers his patriotism only after he has traveled far from England. While
wandering, speakers uncover the visionary powers of the mind and
understand the influence of nature, as in “I wandered lonely as a cloud”
(1807). The speaker of this poem takes comfort in a walk he once took
after he has returned to the grit and desolation of city life. Recollecting
his wanderings allows him to transcend his present circumstances.
Wordsworth’s poetry itself often wanders, roaming from one subject or
experience to another, as in The Prelude. In this long poem, the speaker
moves from idea to idea through digressions and distractions that mimic
the natural progression of thought within the mind.

Memory allows Wordsworth’s speakers to overcome the harshness of the

contemporary world. Recollecting their childhoods gives adults a chance
to reconnect with the visionary power and intense relationship they had
with nature as children. In turn, these memories encourage adults to re-
cultivate as close a relationship with nature as possible as an antidote to
sadness, loneliness, and despair. The act of remembering also allows the
poet to write: Wordsworth argued in the 1802 preface to Lyrical Ballads
that poetry sprang from the calm remembrance of passionate emotional

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experiences. Poems cannot be composed at the moment when emotion is
first experienced. Instead, the initial emotion must be combined with other
thoughts and feelings from the poet’s past experiences using memory and
imagination. The poem produced by this time-consuming process will
allow the poet to convey the essence of his emotional memory to his
readers and will permit the readers to remember similar emotional
experiences of their own.

Throughout his poems, Wordsworth fixates on vision and sight as the

vehicles through which individuals are transformed. As speakers move
through the world, they see visions of great natural loveliness, which they
capture in their memories. Later, in moments of darkness, the speakers
recollect these visions, as in “I wandered lonely as a cloud.” Here, the
speaker daydreams of former jaunts through nature, which “flash upon
that inward eye / which is the bliss of solitude” (21–22). The power of
sight captured by our mind’s eye enables us to find comfort even in our
darkest, loneliest moments. Elsewhere, Wordsworth describes the
connection between seeing and experiencing emotion, as in “My heart
leaps up” (1807), in which the speaker feels joy as a result of spying a
rainbow across the sky. Detailed images of natural beauty abound in
Wordsworth’s poems, including descriptions of daffodils and clouds,
which focus on what can be seen, rather than touched, heard, or felt. In
Book Fourteenth of The Prelude, climbing to the top of a mountain in
Wales allows the speaker to have a prophetic vision of the workings of
the mind as it thinks, reasons, and feels.